The Lewis Man: AN INGENIOUS CRIME THRILLER ABOUT MEMORY AND MURDER (LEWIS TRILOGY 2) (The Lewis Trilogy)

PROLOGUE

He sits at his desk, grey with fear and the weight of this momentous step that, once taken, cannot be taken back. Like time and death.

The pen trembles in his hand as he writes.

This has been on my mind for some time. I know most people will not understand why, especially those who love me, and whom I also love. All I can say is that no one knows the hell I have lived through. And these last weeks it has become, simply, unbearable. It is time for me to go. I am so sorry.

He signs his name. The usual flamboyant scrawl. Illegible. And folds the note, as if in hiding the words he can somehow make them go away. Like a bad dream.

Like the step he is about to take into darkness.

He rises now, and looks around his room for the last time, wondering if he really has the courage to go through with it. Should he leave the note or should he not? Will it really make any difference?

He glances at it, propped against the computer screen where he hopes it will be obvious, and feels the pain of regret as his eye follows the looping letters he learned to write all those years before when his whole life still lay ahead of him. A bittersweet recollection of innocence and youth. The smell of chalk dust and warm school milk.

How pointless it all has been!